Greece

Abstract

The Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) was the first left-wing party in Greek history to exercise power. Until 1981 Greece had been governed by parties of the right or the center. PASOK’s founder, Andreas Papandreou, formed his first single-majority government in October 1981, just seven years after the party’s foundation (September 1974). Analysts have claimed that PASOK was a mass party which was transformed into a cartel party, while its ideology, which initially was left populist, became social democratic in the 1990s (on the foundation and evolution of PASOK, see Lyrintzis, 1984; Spourdalakis, 1988; Sotiropoulos, 1996; Moschonas, 1999; Spourdalakis and Tassis, 2006).